David Schwimmer opens up on 'Trust' at Lookingglass - and life out of the 'Friends" lane

Life has calmed down a little for David Schwimmer. He seems much happier. The last time I spent any significant amount of time with the Lookingglass ensemble member was during the frenzy surrounding the final season of “Friends.” When Schwimmer walked into a bar, he got mobbed. His was then a level of fame that made an ordinary life impossible.

“I really didn't like all that,” a chipper Schwimmer said over dinner recently, admitting that he is a wary fellow by nature and is now relieved to not always be followed by a crowd.

Also during the “Friends” era, Schwimmer was constantly asked to support causes. He decided to get involved in a campaign against date rape and sexual predators. “I wanted to pick one cause and commit to it,” he said. And he did. Schwimmer made a slew of public-service announcements, many of which were targeted at college kids and shown in fraternities. “I wanted to talk to these guys on the level of being a young, heterosexual man,” Schwimmer said, “letting them know that rape is a man's issue too. I'd say that sex is great, but there is a line between having a relationship with a girl and spiking her drink and sleeping with her while she is unconscious.”

The announcements led to an ongoing association with a rape treatment center in Los Angeles. He joined its board. He learned that a lot of date rapes flow from relationships concocted on the Internet. And that led to “Trust,” a piece developed by Schwimmer and his writing partner Andy Bellin.

In an unusual and rather fascinating convergence of events, Schwimmer has been simultaneously editing the movie version of “Trust,” which stars Clive Owen and just wrapped shooting in Ann Arbor, Mich., and the stage play, which opens Saturday night at Lookingglass Theatre. (Heidi Stillman is co-director of the stage version.)

The timing was not intentional. Lookingglass picks its shows based on a vote of the ensemble, which takes place during the company's annual retreat. Even if you're Schwimmer, you don't necessarily get your show picked. When Schwimmer pitched the idea of a piece that would focus on an Internet predator who gets his clutches around a teenage girl, “Trust” had yet to be written. “They were all like, ‘Come back when you have a script,'” Schwimmer said.

So he and Bellin wrote the script. Throughout that process, Schwimmer wasn't sure if he wanted it to be a play or a movie. A play, of course, would afford him more control and allow him to work with his pals at Lookingglass. But since part of the aim of “Trust” was to bring attention to the dangers of Internet predators, a film obviously would reach far more people. So they decided to work on both at once.

If you want to get a film made these days, you have to get a star actor attached. Schwimmer managed to get the script to Clive Owen, who has kids of his own and signed up immediately.

“He said that if he was going to do it, he would have to do it now,” Schwimmer said. So, that meant the film had to come at the same time as the play. Of late, Schwimmer has been spending his days at an editing suite in New York and his nights watching previews in Chicago.

Schwimmer said he had really wanted to film “Trust,” which is set mostly in and around the suburb of Wilmette, in the Chicago area. But the financial incentives offered in Michigan were too good to pass up for a film with a relatively small budget. Thus Ann Arbor is standing in for Wilmette.

Owen plays the girl's father in the movie. (Philip Smith plays the role in the play.) Schwimmer says that the character finds himself consumed by an incapacitating rage at what this adult man has done to his daughter. He says that's invariably what happens in reality.

“Fathers find themselves going to gun stores,” Schwimmer said. “Most people feel that instinct and then check it. But still.”

Schwimmer says he'd been working on “Trust” for years and it's strange for both strands of the project to come together at once. But so it goes. And he says he has enjoyed the cross-fertilization — such as the ability to cut a scene from the film but leave it in the play. “It is remarkable,” he says, “how differently things work.”

The movie version of “Trust” will hit the festival circuit later this year. Schwimmer says his defenses are up against marketers who will want to sell the show as a revenge thriller. At Lookingglass, where Schwimmer has always been understood, he won't have that problem.